EPISODE 44
The Biking Viking
What kind of travel club demands that you visit a number of countries at least equal to your age? Welcome to the world of De Berejstes Klub (DBK), Denmark’s “Travelers’ Club.” Meet Claus Andersen, “the Biking Viking,” a man on a decades-long quest to keep his coveted DBK membership card! Journey with him back to Russia during the 2018 World Cup, where a tense encounter with four masked men took a surprising turn towards friendship. Discover why, out of all the places he has cycled, Syria and Uganda stand out as unexpected top-five cycling paradises. We also delve into the kindness of strangers in unexpected places, including the tale of how a professional stunt cyclist in India led Claus to a man who ingeniously repaired his destroyed bike crank. However, a life of constant travel is not without its perils, as Claus shares a heart-stopping account of a run-in with a motorcycle in the chaotic traffic of Surabaya, Indonesia. Claus Andersen is a true citizen of the world, with a wealth of stories that will evoke laughter and inspire new destinations for your own next adventure on two wheels.
Episode Transcript
Claus: No, the US are not, most likely, not going to let me in. I have too many stamps from places like Syria and Lebanon and I’m taking a further trip again this winter here to several countries where they don’t like the stamps from. So, well, if they don’t want people to visit them that’s fine.
Gabriel: You just heard Claus Andersen, who considers himself a football (as in, soccer) geek, explaining why he will be going to Mexico and not the United States to watch the 2026 World Cup. As you might have guessed from the stamps in his passport, Claus often travels to unusual destinations, both for his work as a tour guide and on his own personal bicycle journeys. This episode offers a glimpse into Claus’s most daring two-wheeled exploits, from cycling 6,800 kilometers to watch two football matches in Tirana and Tbilisi to pedaling 1,800 kilometers through Russia during the 2018 World Cup.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello cycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to another episode of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. We begin today’s episode in a city that is near and dear to me. Copenhagen, Denmark. But before we begin I would like to give a quick shout out to everyone who has already voted for your favorite episodes last season, and remind everybody else that you have until November 5th, link to the Google form is on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website, on the Instagram bio and in the show notes. Every vote counts! Now back to wonderful Copenhagen. In the center of the Danish capital is the Café Globen, a cozy place that offers more than 30 special beers and regularly hosts fascinating talks about travels to exotic destinations. Not surprisingly, Café Globen is the home of an organization called the DBK. Today we sit down with Claus Andersen, “the Biking Viking,” who just happens to be at Café Globen. Besides being a long time member of the DBK, Claus is an experienced bicycle traveler, a freelance tour leader, and he considers himself a citizen of the world. Claus, thank you so much for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Claus: Thank you.
Gabriel: So, first of all, what do the initials DBK stand for?
Claus: Well, it’s Danish, stands for De Berejstes Klub, which means, sort of, if you translate directly, “the Very Travelled People’s Club,” because it is a club where you can only be a member if you travel to as many countries as you’re years old. So in my case, I’m 56. I have to have been to at least 56 countries, in order to be a member.
Gabriel: Oh, so that means you can get kicked out of the club?
Claus: Yes. If you don’t keep one new country every year or you get kicked out.
Gabriel: And does that happen?
Claus: Yes, absolutely. There’s a few people being booted every year.
Gabriel: Incredible that people get kicked out. How long then have you been a member of the DBK?
Claus: Well, I’ve been a member now for 28 years, since 1997.
Gabriel: Nice. I’ve been on the Café Globen mailing list for many years, and so I actually went back and did a search to see what talks you might have given, and I was able to find two talks.
Claus: Oh.
Gabriel: And you’ve probably given more.
Claus: Yes, I’ve given at least 40.
Gabriel: Forty?
Claus: Yeah, I think so, yeah. The cafe has existed for 21 years. I would say I’d give on average 4 or 5 talks a year.
Gabriel: Oh, wow. I was looking back through my email and to the different emails I’ve gotten from Café Globen, but maybe I’ve deleted a bunch of them. So in 2013, you walked the Portuguese Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. Now that was walking, and this is a bicycle touring podcast. So we’re going to start off talking about this one. In 2018, you cycled 1,800 kilometers through Russia during the World Cup that was held there.
Claus: The thing was, I’ve cycled to a few football games around the world. I’ve cycled to Tirana in Albania. I’ve cycled to Tbilisi in Georgia to see Denmark play football. I also cycled around Brazil, both during the World Cup and during the Olympics, but then the World Cup was in Russia. And I initially thought that this is going to be very difficult to cycle around there. But then what happened was, actually just a few weeks before the World Cup, they opened up completely for tourism to Russia. And they said, like, if you have a fan ID, which you get if you buy a couple of tickets for games, then you can travel freely in Russia.
Gabriel: Wow.
Claus: And I thought, well, basically, this is the first time since the revolution in 1917 that they’ve actually opened up Russia for travel this way. So I thought, OK, I’ll grab this chance. So what I did was I bought a plane ticket to Moscow, went into a bicycle shop in Moscow and bought a mountain bike. And then I took the mountain bike out of Moscow and cycled 1,800 kilometers around Russia. So I’ve centered it around a couple of football games, because this was sort of my entry. But I also tested to see, could I actually travel to all these places in between? There was no problem at all. It was very interesting, and I’ve cycled to a lot of countries around the world. It’s definitely one of the more challenging ones because of the language. And also, I mean, there’s long distances in Russia.
Gabriel: Oh, for sure.
Claus: But it was very interesting. I would say, I wouldn’t recommend it as a first thing to do, if you’re going to go cycling. For an experienced touring cyclist, It’s really an interesting challenge.
Gabriel: Let’s see, Denmark qualified for that World Cup and you had tickets to watch Denmark. And so in which cities did Denmark play that you went to see them?
Claus: First, they went to play in a city called Saransk, which is Moscow. No one has ever heard of Saransk before. Totally unknown city, quite industrial city. But the thing is the local governor, he’s very pro-Putin. They awarded that, surprisingly, to this unknown city as well for longstanding support to the regime. So I thought, okay, that’s fine. It was a very doable bike tour. Getting out of Moscow was a little tricky because of the many freeways. I took a little suburban train a little bit south of Moscow, probably about 25 kilometers south of Moscow, and then I started cycling. It was one city called Ryazan, for instance, where I cycled through. Then I came up to Saransk, which was sort of in the middle of the prairies. It was actually very cold when I cycled there. I cycled in early June and I had expected nice summer weather. Then a cold wind came from Siberia and I had four or five degrees Celsius and no winter clothes for the first few days.
Gabriel: Oh.
Claus: From Moscow to Saransk, I literally only met one person who could speak English. And that was a motorbike guy from Moscow on his way to a town called Penza, which I also stopped at. Even the Russians, they were very aware of Google Translate. So we Google translated our way whenever I had to look for accommodation and food. I also was backed up the whole trip. I am a friend of mine, a Belarusian girl living in Moscow. She used to live in Copenhagen some years ago. I was online with her every day and she helped me doing some translation. So I had my own little online interpreter helping me out as well during the trip. Which was good, for instance, because at one point I forgot my inner tubes in a hotel room. So I had to get new inner tubes and she found a place for me where I could get the right size.
Gabriel: The whole time we’ve done the podcast, we’ve never had a long-distance supported bicycle tourist. Usually the support is on the ground with somebody driving a vehicle or something. But you had a long-distance supporter. That’s so funny. That’s really cool.
Claus: Yeah, she was following me every day. I sent her like my little intended itinerary the day, saying today I’m probably going to cycle to this place. Then by the time I arrived to that town, she would have left little notices saying, “Oh, be aware in this town, you know, if you need to find spare parts, you know, there’s a place.” Often there’s not bicycle shops in rural Russia, but often they’ll have like container sales. They’ll have an area in town which has, like, containers where they maybe sell bicycle parts of furniture or whatever out of these containers. So sometimes she would direct me to these container sales if I needed them. And she would check out whether there was accommodation in town. For instance, in one place, she noticed right away that the hotel I was expecting to stay at had closed down. But then she wrote to me and said, by the way, I can see that there’s a large car mechanic in town and they usually have spaces to sleep because the truck drivers, they will come and stay overnight while they fix the cars. So I just drove up to like an auto repair shop and I actually stayed there the night together with all the truck drivers.
Gabriel: How did the first game go in Saransk for the Danish national team?
Claus: Well, they actually won. They beat Peru 1-0. They were a little bit lucky, I would say. It was interesting in the way that we were about 800 Danes going to the game and 30,000 Peruvians. So we were a little outnumbered, the Danes.
Gabriel: Really?
Claus: Yes.
Gabriel: 30,000 Peruvians made it all the way to Saransk.
Claus: If you go to the World Cup, you’ll realize that the World Cup is big among European fans, but it’s 10 times as big among Latin American fans. By far the largest numbers, even in Russia, were Latin Americans. Colombia had more than 100,000 fans going to Russia during that game, for instance. Countries like Colombia and Mexico, they actually have the biggest attendencies at any World Cup, no matter where it is. Even when it’s in Europe, you have more Latin Americans going.
Gabriel: I did not know that. I had no idea.
Claus: It was a good experience in a way. It wasn’t, like, from a tourist point of view, the most interesting city. But because they’d never, ever had foreign tourism before us, people were very curious and very genuinely interested.
Gabriel: And doubly so when you’re on a bicycle.
Claus: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I had one situation which was scary at first, and then it was actually kind of funny when I realized it wasn’t dangerous. Just as I was heading in towards Saransk, maybe like 50, 60 k’s before Saransk, I was driving in a very open space with no buildings or whatever, just prairie. And then suddenly an old car stopped and four guys jumped out of the car and I saw they put masks on.
Gabriel: Oh.
Claus: I got really worried.
Gabriel: Yes.
Claus: Then they came running towards me and it was a theater group.
Gabriel: What kind of masks did they put on? Did they put on some clown masks?
Claus: No, it was these anonymous masks.
Gabriel: Anonymous? Yes, the hacker group. Oh, they’ll wear these Guy Fawkes masks.
Gabriel: Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of English Catholics who conspired to assassinate King James I of England and all the members of Parliament in 1605. They aimed to blow up the House of Lords in what became known as the Gunpowder Plot. Fawkes was tasked with guarding the explosives. However, at the last minute the plot was discovered and Fawkes was arrested on November The 1982 graphic novel V for Vendetta and its 2005 film adaptation feature a protagonist known as “V” who wears a stylized Guy Fawkes mask while fighting against a totalitarian regime in a dystopian United Kingdom. The Guy Fawkes mask is prominently used by the hacktivist group Anonymous, among others, and has become widely recognized as a symbol of protest and rebellion.
Gabriel: Guy Fawkes, yeah. Okay, that is, oh my gosh, that is really a frightening experience.
Claus: Yeah, it was kind of frightening first when four guys with masks come running towards you.
Gabriel: I thought that at the end they were just going to start performing their theater for you on the side of the road.
Claus: No, they came running with a little World Cup trophy.
Gabriel: Oh wow, okay.
Claus: I still have it at home.
Gabriel: I would keep it too, if I were you. Wow, that is funny. Did you then set course for the second of Denmark’s games?
Claus: Well, the second game was against Australia and that was in the sound called Samara. And Samara is in southern Russia. It’s near the border to Kazakhstan. And that was a lot of few hundred kilometers, but it was doable by bike before the next game. So I bike down to Samara. Samara is actually one of the places that’s known as having the most hackers in Russia. I’ve actually had my website hacking attempts quite often from Samara. So I was looking forward to going down there. It’s a holiday town for Russians. As a European, I had no idea, but it’s by the Volga River. It’s an inland city with big river setting and a river beach. So it’s actually a big holiday town, lots of hotels. Actually a very pleasant town. It was also the town where there was supposed to be the second capital of Russia during Stalin. There’s a secret city under Samara that was built by Stalin in case that Moscow should fall. Then he could relocate to Samara. It’s quite an interesting town in southern Russia and that was hot. Then suddenly it turned into like On the way to Samara as well, I stopped in a couple of interesting towns as well. I stopped, for instance, in Ulyanovsk, which is where the Lenin was born. There’s a whole city with a total Lenin village and a massive Lenin museum.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s a big deal.
Claus: Yes. And right next to Ulyanovsk, there’s another town called Tolyatti. And this is a big car-producing city in Russia. And Tolyatti is actually the name of the former leader of the Italian Communist Party.
Gabriel: Right. That’s where they make the Ladas.
Claus: The Ladas, yes. The Lada factories are from Tolyatti. It was only like, I think, one or two day’s cycling from Samara.
Gabriel: Now, I assume there weren’t 30,000 Australians for this match.
Claus: No, there was about 10,000.
Gabriel: Still 10,000? And then again, 800 Danish people?
Claus: A little bit more, maybe about 1,000 Danes. But we were totally outnumbered against Australians as well.
Gabriel: And how did that game go?
Claus: That was a draw. Horrible game, by Denmark in a way, but we were a little bit lucky.
Gabriel: Okay. So far, a win and a draw and a lot of luck. You then had tickets to the third game as well, in the group stage?
Claus: The third game was in Moscow. And I was not really interested in going back to Moscow, because this was unrealistic by bicycle. I didn’t want to get back into the Moscow traffic chaos. So I skipped the third game. I was gambling on Denmark, making it through to the round of 16. So I bought a ticket for that game, which would either be in Nizhny Novgorod or in Kazan. And it ended up being in Nizhny. Nishni was actually quite a scenic city as well, a very historical old city by the river. Nizhny Novgorod used to be called Gorky back in Soviet times. It was a secret city of Gorky, but now it’s just an open city. I don’t know how open today it is, because while Putin has since then reversed things quite a bit in Russia. It was an open city and it was a few hundred kilometers east of Moscow. That’s where we had the round of 16. Denmark had to play Croatia. That was actually quite an easy ride from Samara, because it was flat, flat, flat all the way. I had to go north northwest from Samara. It was very prairie cycling. There weren’t that many Croatians for the game either. There were two European names.
Gabriel: At these games were there Russian people attending as well to fill out the stadium?
Claus: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of Russians actually. During the Denmark-Croatia game, I sat next to a Russian guy who actually bought me beer all the time and he had a bit of a Denmark fetish his whole life, he told me.
Gabriel: Oh, OK.
Claus: What stands out with the World Cup is that is its a gathering of football geeks from all over the world. So I’ve been to four World Cups around the world. I’ve been to the World Cup in Brazil, Germany and France as well. What stands out is that you have all these football geeks from countries that didn’t qualify. So you have people coming from Bolivia and Finland and all these countries that doesn’t qualify and everybody is carrying their flags and, you know, even if they haven’t qualified. That’s why I like it, because it is really not so much about supporting your team as it is just to hang out with fellow football geeks.
Gabriel: Yeah, you know, I’ve seen that on TV at some World Cup game. There’s suddenly somebody with a very random flag. They’re waving some flag of Kazakhstan or something and they’re not even qualified, but I guess that’s one of those football geeks who flew with his flag and just watched the game and cheered for Kazakhstan, even though it was Denmark versus Croatia.
Claus: Yeah, yeah. And the thing is what happened, the first time I cycled a long way to a football game, that was back in 2004 when I cycled to Albania and to Georgia to see Denmark play. One guy had biked all the way from Egypt to see Egypt play and there were actually quite a few of these. One Australian guy as well had biked from Australia. Actually, there were two Australian guys on bikes in Russia. So we were a few of these crazy people as well on bicycles.
Gabriel: Really incredible that there were people who biked even further than you. People started from home.
Claus: Yes. Some Brits – I didn’t meet the British guys – but I know some British guys as well, ride from England to Russia.
Gabriel: What was your analysis of the Denmark-Croatia game?
Claus: It was actually the best game Denmark played, but they lost after a penalty shoot-out. So they were knocked out in the round of 16. Croatia proceeded to go all the way to the final. I would say playing-wise, it wasn’t the best World Cup we’ve had. I’m totally okay not winning the World Cup, you know. I’m just there to meet fellow football geeks. I’m heading to Mexico next year as well for the World Cup in North America.
Gabriel: Okay, Mexico, but not the US.
Claus: No, the US are not, most likely, not going to let me in. I have too many stamps from places like Syria and Lebanon. I’m taking a further trip again this winter here to several countries where they don’t like the stamps from. So well, if they don’t want people to visit them, that’s fine.
Gabriel: Anything else on the Russia trip that’s noteworthy before we move on?
Claus: What surprised me in a way because a lot of people, they said, oh, look at all these videos from Russia, you know, crashing and drunk driving. Actually, that I did not experience very much. I actually experienced that the main roads in Russia were actually surprising in the good quality. But once you got out on the smaller roads, then things got really shit and after dark people, they start racing. So it’s very much a matter of making sure, finish your day before it gets dark. Actually, my biggest issue with roads in Russia was that there was a lot of construction going on. So often I’d be riding over gravel because they were constructing new roads. I guess that’s halted because they’re spending the money on the war now instead. They were actually investing a lot of money in infrastructure back in 2018. It was very interesting to cycle through Russia, very, very interesting. But again, it’s not for beginners. It does have some challenges, I would say, with distances, sometimes with the roads. Absolutely nonexistent English. Once I was out of the World Cup cities, I would go for like one week or 10 days between meeting just one person who could speak English. I like that challenge. I mean, I’ve traveled so much, I enjoy when it gets a little difficult.
Gabriel: Yeah, you’re an experienced traveler. Actually, that makes me think we should rewind all the way to the beginning of how you got into this. You’re obviously from Denmark originally, which is a very bicycle-friendly country. But what made you get into bicycle touring originally?
Claus: Well, the thing was I always knew since I was like four years old that I wanted to travel the world. As I got into my teens, I started reading a lot about travels and trying to figure out what’s realistic when you’re a teenager from a little countryside village, where nobody travels. I also came from an ordinary working-class family, so I couldn’t get a lot of money for it. So I had to sort of finance it myself as a teenager. I realized bicycle travel, that’s not the most expensive way to start traveling. And also then I don’t start getting a driver’s license and buying a car, because that eats all your money up when you’re you want to have a car like all your friends. So instead I got a bicycle and then I thought, okay, I’ll start slowly. So I was 17 when I did the first trip outside Denmark. I cycled from my little village in Denmark to Stockholm in Sweden one summer, worked at a summer festival in Stockholm, cycled about just under 1,000 kilometers on that trip. That was my first try with cycling. Then at 18, I had some luck, got some money for a trip. I took the train to Thessaloniki in northern Greece, and then I cycled from northern Greece to Istanbul, continued down from Istanbul to Izmir, took the ferry over to the Greek islands, and then island-hopped back to Athens and took the train back from Athens to Denmark. I spent about seven, eight weeks doing that just as I turned 18. So that was my first really long trip, I’d say.
Gabriel: These were solo trips.
Claus: This was solo trip, yeah. The Greece-Turkey trip, I started off, I stayed in the youth hostel for a few days first in Thessaloniki because this was back in the day, I couldn’t get the bike on the same train as myself. I sent it as cargo, so I had to wait for three days for it to come. And then I met a German guy, and he was also by bicycle. So I cycled with him to Istanbul. In Istanbul, I met an American guy and a girl from New Zealand, and I biked with them for a while in Turkey. Then I biked alone around a couple of Greek islands and in Athens. So I set off alone, I came back alone. Everybody I cycled with on that trip was just people I met in the road.
Gabriel: I guess your experiences with these acquaintances were positive.
Claus: It was very important, especially one of them, with the American guy. He was around-the-world cyclist. This was very important for me, I think, to connect with him and realize, yes, it’s actually doable to do it all the way around the world. He was actually a very interesting character, who since then built a multinational business around his cycling career.
Gabriel: Who is that?
Claus: This was before Google Translate, remember? This was back in 1988, it was this trip. So instead of having a Google Translate, he had a picture book where he would cut out pictures from magazines and newspapers. Then he had these pointing books. So if it was the country where they didn’t understand him, he had all these books like, there’s a photo of a bicycle, there’s a photo of an American, in fact, identical point on things, or if you wanted something, then he had one page with food items on it, that he could point what he wanted to eat. So he had these point books. And when he got home, he thought, that could be useful for somebody else. So he found the company called Kwikpoint, and then he started to make these pointing guides that has been used by United Nations for many years when they’re sending people out in tribal areas. It all started on his cycling trip back in the late 1980s. His name is Alan Stillman.
Gabriel: Maybe a future guest.
Claus: Maybe a future guest.
Gabriel: What a fascinating person to cycle with.
Claus: Yeah, and purely by chance. Met him at the youth hostel in Istanbul.
Gabriel: So that was your second trip. That was longer. And you were by now addicted?
Claus: I was addicted to travel, I would say, because then I got into my 20s, and then I started realizing there’s something called girls. I forgot about the cycling for a few years because I thought I would rather just go backpacking and stay in hostels and party with girls around the world. I became a backpacker for about a decade. Well, I was mainly being a beach boy in Brazil.
Gabriel: Okay, but Claus, you make it sound like if you bicycle, the girls won’t hang out with you.
Claus: Well, when you’re cycling, you spend a lot of days in small towns where there’s not so much party going on. When you’re 23 years old, you want to party every day. I was just living in little beach towns in Brazil every winter. Like, I would say this was from 19 to touring thing, but then at 28 I’d pick it up again. I flew to Turkey, to southern Turkey, and then I took a cycling tour around Turkey, North Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and finished the trip in Israel. I spent two months doing that.
Gabriel: Oh, how was North Cyprus? Because I bicycled in Cyprus, but you would get to the border and they would say, “No matter what, you can never cross to North Cyprus” and “That’s the Turkish-controlled part.”
Claus: Yeah, well, the thing was I took a ferry from Turkey and that’s why I could get into the north part. It was good cycling there. It’s actually where I hit the highest speed ever on my bicycle, because there is a very, very long descent from the middle of the island and down where I hit a dangerously high speed on the bike.
Gabriel: Do I want to know what that speed was?
Claus: I think I remember, about 65 kilometers an hour.
Gabriel: That’s good. Yeah.
Claus: Crazy, you know, on a bike.
Gabriel: And then you ended up in the Middle East. You went all the way down there.
Claus: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was before the civil war in Syria. Syria is actually top five of the best places I’ve ever cycled. It was super great and very, very safe. I didn’t even lock my bicycle in Syria. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where I did not lock my bike.
Gabriel: Interesting to hear that Syria was such a good place to bicycle, and did you find people were hospitable throughout your journey?
Claus: Absolutely, yes. Probably again like the top five of what I’ve ever experienced in that regard. I felt really, really safe. I’ve actually been back to Syria quite a few times since to work in the tourism sector.
Gabriel: Oh, really? I didn’t know there was much tourism in Syria.
Claus: It was a lot of ancient places, so I do a lot of history tours workwise. I’ve been to Damascus many times for tour groups. If I look at all my old passports, I have a grand total of 24 entry stamps to Syria.
Gabriel: That’s a lot.
Claus: And then from there, I biked to Lebanon. Then went down to Jordan, and Jordan was really good for cycling as well. Very good to go down through the desert and the old King’s Highway from Amman down to Petra. That was totally a bliss all the way. I went down to Aqaba on the Red Sea.
Gabriel: In a previous episode called “Tracking Lawrence of Arabia” with Miles Spencer, we talked a little bit about Syria and Jordan and the many historic places. One thing that was interesting is Lawrence of Arabia actually went to these places at first to look at their castles. And there is a place called, I’m sure you know this, but the Krak des Chevaliers, the old Crusader’s castle, and he was there. And then Aqaba is also where he launched his famous attack on the Turks from the land. They came via the desert from behind instead of coming by sea, which is what the Turks were expecting. So all of those things were in that episode, but you probably know all about that.
Claus: Yeah. He’s been to quite a few places. There’s also a place called al-Azrak, where he used to live. It’s a big fortress that’s near the Saudi Arabian border. It’s a place where not that many visitors go because it’s quite out of the way, but I’ve taken a few tour groups there over the years.
Gabriel: Okay, yeah. There was a mention of Lawrence’s house.
Claus: Yeah. From Aqaba across into Israel there, cycled up through the Negev Desert. The Negev Desert was actually quite good. There was a fair bicycle lane along the way. As I got into central Israel, the biking situation became really bad because of very heavy traffic. By the time I got to Tel Aviv, I actually joined the protest where we said, we want more bicycle trails. They’ve actually gotten these bicycle trails now. I’ve seen recent like footage from Israel, like actually see that they have reacted in recent years. It’s getting quite good for bicycle travel there. But back then the problem was that too many cars on too small roads, but I can see that situation has improved in recent years as more Israelis are starting to cycle. But then I flew home from Tel Aviv on that trip.
Gabriel: That’s just a cool picture in my mind. You know, you bike into town, there’s a protest. What are they saying? More bike paths. “Hell yeah, I’m joining!”
Claus: I was actually alerted a little bit in a way, because on the border between Jordan and Israel, I met a group of Israelis from a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. I ended up staying with an Israeli girl for a couple of days in the kibbutz. She was a keen biker as well and a very activist person. So I was alerted in advance and then I joined the protest in Tel Aviv.
Gabriel: Okay, so it wasn’t spontaneous.
Claus: It was only semi-spontaneous, I would say.
Gabriel: Semi-spontaneous. You’ve mentioned a few times that you do this tour guides. And how did you get started with that? At what time in your travel career did you begin working as a tour guide?
Claus: Well, the first I started just like applying for a job just as a summer rep in a resort in Turkey. And I did that for a little bit. That’s not that much money. It was a lot of party. So this was the slow start for it. This was ’97, that I did this thing the first time. And then I did a little bit here and there. But then actually at about 2004 that it really took off. And this was actually colliding with when we started this Café Globen in Copenhagen. Because we had a lot of people from the travel industry coming in there. And then people they learned that I’ve been to all these countries. So they started hiring me on a freelance basis. Then suddenly I was hired as a hiking guide on the Tour de Mont Blanc. I was hired into taking people to like ancient Greece. And then one day one lady from the company came and said, “Oh, could you take some tour groups of mine to Jordan and Syria and Laos and Cambodia?” “Yes, sure.” This is also one place where I went on one of my trips. When I was 31, I did a trip where I spent five months going around Bangkok, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam on the bike. That sort of gave me some of my first tour-guiding jobs. The fact that I’ve been out there for a few months cycling.
Gabriel: Another trip, another set of destinations. New countries.
Claus: Yes, I did this long trip, that long trip. I’ve cycled twice around India. I’ve cycled three times around Brazil. Done three cycling tours in Mexico. Last year I cycled from my hometown in Denmark to Narva in eastern Estonia. I’ve just cycled around Uganda this past winter. Very good place to go cycling as well. Uganda is a great cycling destination.
Gabriel: Top five?
Claus: Yes, definitely. I was very surprised how good it was. I’ve always been a little worried whether the sub-Saharan Africa was suitable for cycling. I was a little bit worried about distances between towns and the price of accommodation. I was kind of worried that there would only be very expensive lodges that would cost several hundred dollars a day, which I couldn’t afford. What actually changed me is that there’s a French guy, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, the guy who’s ridden his recumbent bike from northern France to Cape Town. He’s documented everything on video and he always writes what he pays for stay every night. And then I realized, oh, he tends to pay like 20 bucks a night. I can afford that. And then I was looking at all his videos through Africa, trying to figure out what African country is the most suitable for me to start in. And then in the end, I settled on Uganda seems to be a good place. Not that long distance between towns, always like affordable accommodation. I spent one month going around southern Uganda. It was really good, really, really positive. I definitely want to do more sub-Saharan Africa.
Gabriel: I don’t know about this French person.
Claus: He’s turned into a massive celebrity in Africa. Whenever he’s cycling now through Africa, all the Africans are like stopping their cars and like jumping out and wanting selfies with a guy on the recumbent bike. He’s turned into a complete legend. He has about half a million followers and I think 450,000 of them Africans. He’s a superstar in Africa.
Gabriel: And is this because he documented his travels on video? He’s not the only person to bike in Africa.
Claus: No, but he does it quite well. He’s very charismatic. I have never been on TikTok, but he’s big on TikTok as well.
Gabriel: Okay.
Claus: He’s been living on the bike now for four years since he started cycling. He’s on the way back to France now. He just set off. He traveled down through eastern Africa. Now he wants to go back through West Africa.
Gabriel: Fascinating. Another interesting character.
Claus: Yeah, from a cycling perspective, he’s very practical. He has a GoPro, because I want to see what does the road look like when I’m cycling somewhere. This is my biggest research is actually the Google Street View when I’m trying to plan a trip. I try to figure out, do they have like a shoulder of the road? Because I don’t want to share a narrow road with a lot of traffic. I don’t mind a lot of traffic as long as there’s a shoulder for soft traffic. Like in India, for instance. India, I love cycling in India. Even though there’s a million cars and 10 million cows. All the cows, they mean that the traffic has to slow down. It’s crazy. India is insane. But all the insanity means that traffic moves slow. They always have a big shoulder, like, that’s 5 to the road for people who are walking or people that walk in with animals. In that regard, India is great because it moves slow. I’m a very slow cyclist as well. I’m super slow. I do my 100 kilometers a day, but I would typically spend 6 hours in the saddle doing it.
Gabriel: All right. Well, 100 kilometers is not bad.
Claus: That’s a normal day. In Uganda, I did significantly less, but that was also because I was worried about being stuck in the dark. It’s not people that I’m worried about in Uganda. It’s actually animals because if you can’t see the animals, that might be a problem, especially talking elephants. Because actually it’s not lions who eat you. Lions, they don’t want humans. Everybody told me that as well in Uganda. They said, “Don’t worry about lions.” They said, “But worry about elephants,” because elephants do not like traffic. They’re generally upset with traffic, but the cars are too big for them to attack, which means they attack two-wheel traffic. They attack scooters and bicycles. If you see a wild elephant, they said, just stop and wait for it to walk away because you don’t want to get close to it. And this is a trouble at night. I remember the first time I saw an elephant ever in the wild was in Thailand when I did the cycling trip there, back in my bike and I thought I parked it up against the lamppost and I was basically parking it up against an elephant. Because it was just standing there. It was a work elephant, like a Thai work elephant.
Gabriel: Okay, but this is either the thinnest elephant in history or you have a very odd idea of what a lamppost looks like.
Claus: Yeah, well… I didn’t… It was dark. I just started to put my bike up against and then I looked up and realized it’s a freaking elephant that I’m putting my bike up against.
Gabriel: Okay, okay. It was pitch dark.
Claus: This was in northeast Thailand, in Udon Thani, where they used a lot of elephants for work.
Gabriel: Well, in the previous episode, “Tour d’Afrique” with Henry Gold, he was actually charged by an elephant in India and is very lucky to be alive.
Claus: I worked as a cycling guide in the past in Sri Lanka as well. Sri Lanka has a lot of elephants. I always had to tell my clients, don’t stop when we meet elephants because we’d meet them sometimes, especially next to a garbage dump. Because they would go and flourish in the garbage dumps. And if we stopped there, they would take it as if we were trying to get their food. As soon as we stopped, they would start looking at us aggressively and start trumpeting and things like this. And then it’s just a matter of getting the fuck out right away.
Gabriel: That’s for sure. And they’re surprisingly fast too.
Claus: Yeah, they can run like can outrun you.
Gabriel: And that’s something a lot of people don’t realize. Because they always think, oh, elephants, they’re big, they’re heavy, they’re walking around, but they are really fast.
Claus: If they get angry, you have to really worry because they tend to throw things up in the air and then they step on them. They stomp you.
Gabriel: Right, right. Well, that’s what it was. I mean, Henry got thrown up in the air. He got grabbed by the elephant’s trunk, thrown up in the air and stomped. The helmet was the one that cracked and not his head. And of course, he had lots of injuries and it took him a year to recover. We don’t want to go through every single one of your tours because I think that’s many, but I’m very interested in your concept of the top five. I feel like these two countries we’ve identified, Syria and Uganda, they’re so interesting to be top five. I really want to ask, what are the other top five countries?
Claus: I have to say, I really enjoy cycling in India. I would say the Indian West Coast, that is something that’s overlooked. There are a few people cycling it, but it is very few. I cycled the West Coast of India last year without meeting a single non-Indian tour cyclist. I’ve come across people online who’ve done it, but it’s such a great trip. It’s totally on par with doing Vietnam north to south, for instance, which a lot of people do. I cycled from Mumbai to Kerala. It’s really a good trip and it’s very doable and there’s budget hotels all along the way because it’s full of Indian middle-class tourism. So you have little budget guest houses all the way. It can be done without camping as well. If people don’t want to camp in the tropics or you can camp and you go down past Goa to Kerala. The Indian West Coast is really, really good.
Gabriel: What’s the best time of year to do it?
Claus: I did it in, let me think, December, January. That was very good.
Gabriel: The temperatures are milder at that time.
Claus: In that part of the world, you want to avoid the monsoon. You want to avoid too much rain.
Gabriel: Yeah, definitely.
Claus: And the monsoon, if I remember right, falls from May to September, I think, in India.
Gabriel: Did you go right along the coast or did you venture into some of the national parks that were a bit inland?
Claus: I was aiming at the coast all the time. Sometimes the road takes you inland as well. And then a lot of river crossings with small boats and ferries along the way.
Gabriel: That sounds fascinating.
Claus: This is something you could do as your first trip outside of Europe, I’d say, quite easily. It’s not more difficult than biking around Vietnam or Thailand.
Gabriel: Okay, so we have Syria, Uganda, India.
Claus: What else? What else would I pick? All Southeast Asia is generally quite good, I think. It depends a little how you want it because a place like Laos is very doable as well. It’s very rural. There’s limited accommodation. But if you really want to get away from the big cities, then Laos is great. But then again, I would say places like Vietnam and Malaysia, I personally think they’re really good, but you have a lot more people. I would say maybe another really good country for cycling is Sri Lanka. Should we put some European context into it?
Gabriel: Sure, yeah.
Claus: Then I would say like Estonia, for instance, is really good. Outside of Tallinn, it’s a country with a lot of bicycle roads, a lot of rural areas, with a lot of forests if you want to go camping. I was in Estonia last summer. It’s very, very doable, especially the eastern Estonia, if I should pick a place in Europe that’s not like Denmark or the Netherlands.
Gabriel: Yeah, and that’s also a little bit out of the way, eastern Estonia.
Claus: Yeah, yeah. Literally, if you go to a Narva in Estonia, you can stand and look over the River Narva and you have Russia 150 meters away.
Gabriel: Oh yeah, they’re very aware of that.
Claus: Yeah, yeah. And in these days here of conflict, the Estonia-Russia border crossing is very up in the face.
Gabriel: Did you try to cross into Russia or you stayed in Estonia?
Claus: No, I stayed in Estonia. This was last year and I would say it was not doable for a western. You have a big Russian minority in Estonia and they can cross and they do, but there’s not many other people who’s doing it. And I would also say with the current situation, I wouldn’t, as a westerner, cross into Russia. If the crisis escalates, they might want to have somebody, you know, that they can swap their own prisoners with. It’s quick to point at some western bicycle tourists and say, “Spy,” you know, then lock you up until they can swap you for some Russians that were sitting in a European prison.
Gabriel: This actually happened in Iran. There was a bicycle tourist who was called a spy and put into jail.
Claus: Yeah, I think the French guy, recently. Yes. And there was a Spanish guy who walked, who tried to walk through the World Cup in Qatar.
Gabriel: Yes.
Claus: He spent more than a year in Iranian prison.
Gabriel: Yeah, this poor Spanish guy who was walking. Yes, he was taken. Ah, but of course, whatever guests we’ve had that have talked about Iran, they say that that’s just incredible for hospitality and all that.
Claus: Yes, I’ve only heard good things about Iran.
Gabriel: So that’s a place you haven’t been?
Claus: No, I have not been.
Gabriel: Ah! We’ve identified all these great places. Now, would you care to identify one of the worst places for cycling? Does anything come to mind?
Claus: Lebanon was challenging because of the roads. One thing is Lebanon is very, very steep. It’s just one big mountain range that falls into the Mediterranean. And is either up or it’s down in Lebanon. And the roads were in very bad condition there. And most of the cars consists of old Mercedes that takes a lot of space in the road, leaving very little space for bicycles. So while Syria was super, super easy to cycle, Lebanon was quite a big challenge. But not for safety reasons, I would say, other than the risk of being hit by a car. It’s not the people. I actually found in Lebanon to be super friendly. If I did Lebanon as one cycling trip alone, I’ll probably come back thinking that was pretty damn hard and it wasn’t really that suitable for cycling.
Gabriel: Okay, good. We’ve covered those. Is there a favorite story or something else you’d like to add that I haven’t asked you about? Some crazy adventures? We’ve had several, but any other crazy adventures or things that happened?
Claus: Oh, yeah, well, there’s quite a few things that can happen. You know, that’s happened. Man, where do I start?
Gabriel: Let’s go by category. What about a mechanical? Craziest mechanical issue?
Claus: Well, I think the craziest in mechanical terms, I was cycling from Delhi to Kolkata a few years ago in Northern India. I was cycling around Uttar Pradesh and my crank just fell apart completely, like in one go. It had given some strange noises for a few days and then suddenly it just gave a weird noise and then everything fell apart. It was a Brazilian-made bike that was probably not the best. I was like, crap, man, this is a trip I can’t continue. I was carrying my bike in this semi-big provincial town in India, and I was carrying it towards the train station. I thought, okay, I’ve got to take the train to Kolkata now because this is not repairable, I think. And then one guy, he starts running after me and saying, “Hey, hey, hey.” And I’m like, “Go fuck off. You know, I don’t want to talk to you. You know, my bike is broken. I’m pissed off.” But then he shouts, you know, “I can help you, I can help you.” And then it showed out he was a professional stunt cyclist, working for Red Bull. He said, “I’m the only guy in town who ever got out of town. I’m a stunt cyclist and I have speciality bikes and I know a guy who can fix anything.” And we went over to this old guy in town. He spent the whole day like, he took the whole crank apart and then he built up a crank. Like he cut and drilled everything himself. And then the next day I came, I had a new crank on my bike that he’d made by hand and he charged me about five euros for it. And then I paid him about 12 euros and he looked like he won the lottery. This was like purely so by chance that I met this one guy because this was a town that was so small that it had no international people at all. Or like normally not a bicycle shop that could fix anything, but because this guy there, he happened just to work for big international companies, then he knew how to get a bike fixed.
Gabriel: So next category, meeting people.
Claus: Actually, in terms of meeting people, I was one cycling through Brazil, just before the Olympics in Brazil. And one time I bike through this little provincial town south of Rio de Janeiro and then one evening I’m walking home from a restaurant and then I walk past another restaurant and I’m thinking, that restaurant actually looks really cool. I should have gone there and I was thinking maybe I should even stay another day just to visit this restaurant. So I just put my head into the restaurant to look at the opening hours. And then somebody in the restaurant says, “Is this Claus from Denmark?” And then I turn around and then this woman, she comes up, shakes my head and says, “Hello, I’m Catherine Reichert from South Africa.” This is a woman that I’ve communicated with for 15 years online without ever meeting. And then we just happened to be in the same restaurant with like four or five tables in rural Brazil at the same time. And she recognized me from my profile photo because I did not recognize her, but I knew totally who Catherine Reichert was.
Gabriel: Meeting people. Check. Next category, accident.
Claus: Yes, I would say that the accident I had in Surabaya, Indonesia was the worst. Nothing serious happened to me, but it could have. Indonesia I think probably has the worst traffic. Java.
Gabriel: Oh wow. That’s saying something after we’ve talked about Moscow, we’ve talked about India, and this beats all of them.
Claus: Yeah, Indonesian traffic is insane. Sometimes in Indonesia, I’ve seriously thought it’s actually quite difficult to judge if you didn’t know whether they had right or left wing traffic. You wouldn’t really know whether it’s left or right because so many people drive constantly on the other side of the road because they say, oh, I’m faster than everybody. So I’m taking over everyone. I’ll just sway back into the right side of the road whenever there’s traffic coming against me. Otherwise I’ll drive in the other side because then I go straight past all the traffic. So we have all these speeders going in the wrong side of the road. Crazy.
Gabriel: In some places they drive on the right and some they drive on the left and in Indonesia they drive on both.
Claus: Yeah, yeah, whatever they feel like.
Gabriel: Wow.
Claus: I would say the thing is Indonesia has so many islands, so it also depends on the islands. This crazy, crazy thing here I would say comes down to Java. Bali is somewhere in the middle, I would say. Bali has some crap roads and some very good areas. But then you’ve got Lombok, which is more rural and Lombok is a great island for cycling. It’s a very big country. In Java, I saw quite a lot of accidents that came from full frontal impact between a car and a bus and things like it. I saw several accidents where dead people were spread out in the street.
Gabriel: Oh, gosh.
Claus: The traffic is bad, as I said. At night, the streets are very well lit in Java. Actually, they’re better lit in Java than in Denmark. So often I would ride in the evening because the streets were well-lit and there was a lot less traffic of all this crazy traffic. So I would sometimes ride in the dark, which I normally never do when I’m cycling. But then one night I was riding into Surabaya, the second biggest town in Java. And then it starts to rain quite heavily and I come to a crossing and then a lorry, he drives out right in front of me. So I just brake my bike, I stop, and the motorbike behind me, he also pulled the brakes. He didn’t stop very well, his motorbike crashed when he pulled the brakes because the road was slippery. His bike crashed right behind me and he smashed straight into me at quite high speed. But because I have my bicycle panniers on the back, the panniers, they act as a crash barrier. So he just smacked straight into my panniers and to my back wheel. My bike flew like 80 meters down the road together with his motorbike. And I just ended up sitting on the street thinking, what just happened, man?
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Claus: But actually nothing happened to me. But my bike, my back wheel was screwed actually for the rest of the trip. A lot of the spokes broke and I had them fixed the next day, but it kept breaking. But it worked, I still managed to bike 3,500 kilometers on that trip. But this was one where things could have gone wrong, because the motorbike, it was like a big motorbike, it was like 500 cc motorbike. It crashed into my pannier. Had it crashed into my body, it would have been a different matter.
Gabriel: Right, definitely. You would have been hospitalized.
Claus: Yeah, absolutely. It would have broke my back most likely.
Gabriel: So you were lucky that you were unharmed.
Claus: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. This is one of these situations where you’re sometimes are lucky.
Gabriel: Final category, illness.
Claus: Actually, this is something where I have been very fortunate… No, actually, no, I have an illness story, man. It was short-lived, but it was so bloody painful. I was in the Philippines and one day I was biking across an island called Aglan. I just missed yachts, everything. It was super hot. I was passing a couple of villages where I thought I could buy some food, but there was not really any food to buy. What surprised me the most about the Philippines is that the food supply in the countryside is very limited, because people are super poor and they sell all the produce as soon as they can. So often they have very little proper food for themselves. And this was a problem, so I was starved. I didn’t have enough to drink. And then I come to this ferry port and I take a ferry to another island and it starts raining on the ferry and I get a little cold. And then I get to the next island and then I go and lie on my bed. And then suddenly I thought, screw this man, my kidney just stopped working. I’d never had kidney pain in my life, but I had no doubt, this is my right kidney. And there’s something very, very wrong right now. It was literally in 10 seconds. I had so much pain in my kidney. I’ve never experienced anything worse. And I thought, shit, man, that I had kidney failure now. I was just lying there barely able to move. This is so bad. I thought I’m dying now. So I actually opened my computer to send my brother a quick message where I was, where I could be found. And then as my computer opens, I start thinking, maybe I should google kidney pain first. I googled kidney pain. It suggested kidney stones. It said, just drink, drink, drink, you know, I had like one of these one-and-a-half liter bottles of water next to me. And I drank the whole thing and I had so much pain. I was like, literally, I needed to pee all the time, but I couldn’t. There was nothing coming out and I was just lying in the bathroom, clutching the toilet for about surreal thing, you know, I was like in a zombie state because I was in so much pain. And I was just drinking, drinking, drinking and just trying to survive. And then suddenly after 20 minutes, suddenly it started to go away. And I’m thinking, yeah, I guess it was a kidney stone, maybe. And then I sort of walked out of the hotel and then there was a little beach and then there was a bar. And I thought, okay, I think I can have a burger. So I had a beer and a burger. Within a minute it hit me like with so much pain, like I have never in my life had more pain. But then it went pretty quickly and I basically guess I peed out the kidney stone without noticing it. Because it is when a kidney stone is passing that you get this insane pain. And it’s apparently the worst pain you can experience as a man. It’s supposed to be like similar to a woman giving birth.
Gabriel: I think a woman would say, oh, a kidney stone, maybe that’s a few millimeters in diameter, whereas the baby is a lot bigger.
Claus: I have never experienced anything like this, man.
Gabriel: Yeah, it sounds terrible.
Claus: But it was so weird because I didn’t even go to the hospital. The next morning I realized, oh man, I’m staying next to the hospital. I should probably have gone there. But I was like, no, while it’s over now, there’s no reason I didn’t go.
Gabriel: And then you’re like, wait, I think I can have a beer.
Claus: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to the beach and had a beer and a burger.
Gabriel: “I’m supposed to drink! Yeah.”
Claus: I was kind of like in sort of a state where I was like, what the hell just happened, man?
Gabriel: Another great story. Claus, I have the feeling we could keep recording for hours because you have so many stories. I guess if I had one final question, it seems like you’ve really made football an integral part of your bike touring as well. You know, traveling to see Denmark and watching games all over. I think that’s a quite unique feature of your bike touring.
Claus: I was a little inspired by a few people, you know. I had two friends, they drove around the world in a car and they went to see some Olympics. And I thought, oh, it could be interesting as well with football, you know. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across this. Some books by a guy called Tony Hawkes, English comedian.
Gabriel: Yes.
Claus: You know him, Round Ireland with a Fridge?
Gabriel: Yes. Yes.
Claus: Playing the Moldovans at Tennis.
Gabriel: Yes. Playing the Moldovans at Tennis. Oh my gosh. That’s a good one.
Claus: That was a big inspirational thing for me. I found that book in a second-hand bookstore in Thailand, when I was cycling around Asia in me a little bit to do it. And I thought, I’d like to do this surreal shit, you know. It was kind of that that partly inspired me, I would say, to do something as fucking silly as cycle 6,800 kilometers to see two football games in Tbilisi and Tirana.
Gabriel: Well, I just love it. I think that’s really great. And it seems like it’s something you’ve kept up, you know, throughout your life. You see if there’s a football game somewhere you can watch.
Claus: Yeah. I just need to have the time for it, to take time off from work. It used to be easier for me because I used to work predominantly during the summer. Before I started tour guiding, I was a hotel receptionist in Copenhagen. But now when I do the tour guiding, that’s mainly in spring and fall. So it has to be something during summer or during December, January.
Gabriel: And then another thing is, did you say that you were one of the people who started the Café Globen?
Claus: Yes. Yes. I was among the founders.
Gabriel: Really? Wow.
Claus: Yeah. I actually had the first shift behind the bar ever back in… this must have been back in 2004.
Gabriel: I lived in Copenhagen from 2007 until 2011. It would have been right around then, 2007, that I heard about Café Globen and started visiting. And I gave a talk there once.
Claus: So you actually gave a talk as well?
Gabriel: Yeah, I gave a talk. It’s interesting. Those were the early days of Café Globen.
Claus: I’m sure we’ve been in the cafe at the same time at some point because during that period, I was one of the people who were a lot in the cafe.
Gabriel: That is incredible.
Claus: The thing was, the first couple of years we ran the cafe, we had a lot of problems getting started. This was really difficult times with a lot of things. But then we had a very energetic crowd coming in and we were there all the time. Well, me and three or four other people.
Gabriel: How has the cafe evolved now, in all of these years? You said it started in offering at the cafe?
Claus: Well, I think right now it’s very vibrant. We have one person volunteering at the cafe who has contacts everywhere. So we have actually, in terms of talks, we never have more. We have a multitude of talks right now. Then we have a lot of dance groups as well. We have some groups who come here on Friday and there’s different dance groups. So one Friday we’ll have a group dancing Brazilian forró. Next weekend, next Friday it’ll be Dominican bachata.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s something for my wife, bachata.
Claus: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gabriel: I saw the website. Yeah, it’s busy.
Claus: Well, we had a Danish couple here recently as well who cycled from North Cape in Norway to Cape Town in South Africa. We actually have a lot of cycling people here at the moment. Whenever I give a talk about my tour cycling, the cafe is full, always.
Gabriel: If you find yourself in Copenhagen, be sure to check out Café Globen to listen to an interesting talk, dance some bachata, or just have a beer. Who knows, perhaps you might find Claus working behind the bar, just like in the good old days. And remember Alan Stillman, the American long-distance cyclist that Claus met at a youth hospital in Istanbul in 1988? He was developing the concept for Kwikpoint then and still runs the company today. You can hear an interview with Alan Stillman, next time on the show.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork, and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife, Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Claus: They wear these “Gay Fuchs” masks.
Gabriel: I don’t know what “Gay Fuchs” is.
Claus: “Gay Fuchs” is the guy who set fire to the English Parliament, back in the day.
Gabriel: Oh, Guy Fawkes.
Claus: Guy Fawkes, yeah.
Gabriel: That was a very Danish way of saying it.
Show Notes
You can learn more about the Biking Viking’s adventures on his website, Travelling Claus.
Vote for your favorite episodes and provide any kind of additional feedback on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast 2025 survey!